Prefer Civ V, and have done since release. You get more tangible feedback on how your decision affect the game. With Civ IV you did endless tinkering with various stats, and got very little in terms of indicating if that actually did anything or not.

All Civ games tend to suffer from the lack of pivotal moments in the game's progress - how well each of the players is doing and who is going to win is fairly predictable far form the actual end-game. Civ IV was much worse in this regard, and the end-game was a bit dull (hence the companies which they introduced as an expansion, but in reality they didn't have enough clout to do anything).

Yeah, Civ V is a bit simpler, but it is actually a better game regardless.

X201, Chopsen: Thanks for expanding on that a bit - its good to hear the other side. Yup, its the Amazon reviews that I was reading - to be fair they did seem better written than some Amazon reviews i.e. the points were well argued, etc; but like you say, perhaps they were overly vocal hardcore views - and there wasn't much talk of whether Civ 5 is enjoyable or fun to play.

@X201 Thanks for the heads-up on that - good timing on that, except my proper PC is not that acessible at the moment. Still, its cheap enough to buy to try.

However, I spent more time over at Civ Fanatics trying to see what mods were available for Civ IV and V. Its freaky heavy over there - you need a degree in geekology to get through the content - the forum itself is so dense. Anyway, I got a bit more of a balanced view on Civ IV vs Civ V.

Even though there might be some fun aspects to playing Civ V, there are a couple of dealbreakers for me and for that reason, I'm out. Thanks for helping me out with your replies though.

@X201 I was (maybe stupidly) sucked in to the 1 unit per square thing being a major problem - that didn't appeal to me. But I eventually got overwhelmed with information on that particular site - I got the impression there were some really good tweaks, mods and add-ons for all Civs but I just lost the will to Civ after a while.

In fact, I read a brilliant (huge) article the other day about how/why it fails, with a big focus on the decision to end stacks o' doom ruining the economic model. I'll dig it out and link it; it's a great read,=.

Civ 5 is a bit weird it should be the best civ ever, they've made the combat have some strategy to it, you actually need to have some planning for your empire and everything looks fantastic. However for some reason it's nowhere near as engaging and totally all consuming as all the previous titles in the series.

"If we hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a a house of cards, checkmate." Zapp Brannigan

Yes, the largest change in Civilization 5 is ultimately its largest design flaw. This will be a controversial point, as I know a lot of people really enjoy the new combat system, but it has to be said: the One Unit Per Tile restriction is the core problem with Civ5's design. Everything is based around this restriction. Everything. It determines how city production works, it determines the pace of research, it explains why tile yields are so low. Civilization was completely rewritten from the ground up to make use of the One Unit Per Tile limit on gameplay.

I liked the move the 1UPT. Previously the game largely boiled down to stacking piles of units and throwing them at cities. It boiled down to who could stockpile the largest armies the fastest on be bothered to move them, one-by-one, around the map. I found this boring to achieve and tedious to get attacked by.

I tend to play on smaller maps in Civ 5, which limits my growth anyway. I find it difficult to expand much because there just basically isn't the landmass to allow it (along with other civs taking space up), so haven't really experienced the unbalancing effect of having lots of smaller cities.

1upt was a good idea though,positioning becomes much more important in battle, before you could just throw a stack of troops at any problem and win, always. Now you actually have to think about how your going to, for example, take a city rather than throwing a stack of units at it and knowing you'll always win.

"If we hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a a house of cards, checkmate." Zapp Brannigan

I like 1UPT. I adds difficulty to attacking cities in non-open positions. i.e You can't just do a full strength attack on a mountainous region, for the simple fact that you can't get all of your forces around it.

Same goes for coastal cities, you need navy to help with the bombardment.

When I start a new game I always have the settings on random. I love the challenge of learning to play the game in new ways, on different maps. Having one single playing style makes it dull.

People always moan about something new, they will probably be moaning again in 2015-ish when Civ VI is released

Same here, I thought 1UPT was a massive step forward, removing much of the tedium that has always plagued the endgame in the Civ series. Very interesting article though. I have to admit I've never seen the carpet of doom to that extent as in that screenshot, I am probably a too casual Civ Player. I am also not sure it's really a worse problem than the infamous Stacks of Doom.

I think UncleLou has just touched on what may be the route of the problem.

In all titles like this, the hardcore players tend to be subsidised by the casual players. It becomes a balancing act for the developers, with the problem being that if you alienate one side you lose the community support, but if you alienate the other side your cashflow is reduced and the accountants start cancelling things

Hmm, he touches on interesting points but some of his logic is dodgy to say the least.
The whole global happiness thing is very skewed for instance, you could easily turn it around to "prove" Civ4 got it wrong while Civ5 gets it right.

And it does indeed reek a lot of 'this game is too casual, I want it to be hardcore!' fanboyism too.
Take the science agreement argument: if you genuinely take the trouble to lock out undesired techs by investing one point in each you deserve to get a desirable one from an RA.
Spending exactly one research point in a tech is practically almost impossible to pull off even once after all, considering research is tied to population. So pratically you'd have to waste quite a bit of research on undesirable techs in order to get a (presumable higher-tier) desirable one. It's just an advanced strategy, nought wrong with that.

I though CivIII was the weakest of the series, actually. Just did not get along with it at all. II was great (though flawed due to being too "easy" to exploit) IV was a good time sponge (but games had a tendency to get bogged down in tedious minutia), V is a nice change in direction for the series. They've all got their weaknesses. I think some people just wanted CivIV with better graphics. That would have been pointless.